SIX hundred and fifty jobs are to go after high street bank Abbey National announced yesterday it was to close its car finance business.

SIX hundred and fifty jobs are to go after high street bank Abbey National announced yesterday it was to close its car finance business.

Abbey National said that two-thirds of the 1,000 staff at First National Motor Finance are to be made redundant by the end of the year.

A statement from the bank said that efforts to sell the business had failed.

The bank said it was planning to close FNMF to new business as soon as possible, with most of its existing books due to expire over the next two to three years.

Abbey National's chief operating officer, Stephen Hester, said, "We would clearly have preferred to find a future for the business that would have offered security for our staff, but sadly that has not proved possible."

FNMF employs around 600 people at its base in Redhill, Surrey, with the rest of the staff spread across the country including at offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, and Belfast.

The move comes less than a month after Abbey National sold the bulk of First National - including a mortgage business and home-improvement loan operation - to GE Consumer Finance.

The move was part of Abbey's strategy of cutting back its operations to focus on its core high street banking business.

Abbey revealed details of the strategy as it unveiled losses of &#xA3;984m in February.